Supreme Court of India (File photo)
NEW DELHI: The Supreme Court on Wednesday decided to hear day-to-day arguments from July 27 through video conferencing on petitions challenging validity of 12% Maratha quota in jobs and admissions to educational institutions in Maharashtra. The apex court however refused to grant any interim stay on its application saying the court had earlier refused it multiple times.
The main plank of the bunch of petitioners challenging the validity of the Maratha quota is that it took the total reservation in the state to 74%, which is way beyond the 50% ceiling on quota put by the SC in its landmark Indra Sawhney judgment in November 1992, while upholding the validity of 27% OBC quota in government jobs, which was later extended to admissions in state-run educational institutions.
A bench of Justices L N Rao, Hemant Gupta and S R Bhat weighed requests for open court physical hearing of the petitions but said since there is no certainty about when the courts would open for physical hearing given the pandemic situation, it would like to commence day-to-day hearing on "this important issue" from July 27.
Senior advocate Kapil Sibal introduced complications by arguing that if the petitioners' main argument is that the 12% Maratha quota violated 50% ceiling on reservation, then the court should also simultaneously consider the validity of 10% quota for economically weaker sections as that too breached the ceiling.
The bench said that it was seized of petitions which challenged only the Maratha quota. "The 10% EWS quota is not part of the issues raised by the petitions. If the issue arises during the arguments, we will consider it then." The SC had on January 25 last year admitted petitions challenging the EWS quota, but since then it had not set up a Constitution bench to take up hearing of the petitions challenging EWS quota on the ground that it breached 50% ceiling.
In Indra Sawhney judgment too, the SC had expressed reservation against 10% EWS quota. It had said, "Though the criteria is not yet evolved by the government of India, it is obvious that the basis is either the income of a person and/or the extent of property held by him. The impugned memorandum does not say whether this classification is made under Clause (4) or Clause (1) of Article 16."
It also said, "Reservation of 10% of vacancies among open competition candidates on basis of income/property-holding means exclusion of those above the demarcating line from those 10% seats. The question is whether this is constitutionally permissible? We think not. It mRead More – Source
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